Statamic Auto Alt Text

Automatically generate descriptive alt text for images in Statamic v5 using AI services via Prism PHP

⚠️ Upgrading from v0.x?

Breaking Changes in v1.0: Moondream support has been removed. If you were using Moondream, switch to Ollama with a vision model like llava for local processing, or choose from 7+ cloud providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).

Migration is simple: Replace your old config with the new AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL format:

# Old (v0.x)
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_SERVICE=openai
OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4.1
 
# New (v1.x)
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL=openai/gpt-4.1

See Upgrading from v0.x for full details.

Features

• Automatic Generation: Generate alt text for assets using AI by listening for Statamic asset events
• Multiple AI Providers: Support for OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, Mistral, Groq, DeepSeek, and xAI via Prism PHP
• Data Privacy: Option to use local Ollama endpoints, keeping image data within your infrastructure
• Asset Filtering: Exclude sensitive or private assets from processing with global patterns, container-specific rules, or individual asset settings
• Control Panel Integration: Field Action to generate alt text for individual images
• Bulk Processing: Artisan Command for processing images individually or in batch

Installation

composer require el-schneider/statamic-auto-alt-text

Publish the configuration file:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="statamic-auto-alt-text-config"

Configuration

Configure your AI provider in .env:

# Model format: provider/model-name
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL=openai/gpt-4.1
 
# API key (managed by Prism - see config/prism.php)
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Supported Providers

Custom Providers

You can use any custom provider supported by Prism. First, register your custom provider in a service provider:

use App\Prism\Providers\MyCustomProvider;

 

public function boot(): void

{

    $this->app['prism-manager']->extend('my-provider', function ($app, $config) {


        return new MyCustomProvider(apiKey: $config['api_key']);


    });

}

Then configure it in your .env:

AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL=my-provider/model-name

See Prism's Custom Providers documentation for details on building and registering custom providers.

For advanced provider configuration (custom endpoints, timeouts, etc.), publish Prism's config:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="prism-config"

Non-English Captions

You can customize the prompt to generate captions in your preferred language:

AUTO_ALT_TEXT_PROMPT="Beschreibe dieses Bild kurz und bündig, um einen Alternativtext für Barrierefreiheit bereitzustellen."
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_SYSTEM_MESSAGE="Du bist ein Barrierefreiheitsexperte, der kurze, beschreibende Alt-Texte für Bilder generiert. Antworte nur mit dem Alt-Text, ohne Einleitung oder Erklärungen."

Usage

Automatic Generation

The addon listens for configured Statamic events (default: AssetUploaded and AssetSaving). When an asset without alt text is detected, a background job is dispatched to generate it automatically using your configured AI service.

Important: This feature requires Laravel's queue system with an asynchronous queue driver (e.g., database, redis, sqs) and a running queue worker (php artisan queue:work). The default sync driver won't work for background processing.

Optionally customize the queue configuration:

# Optional: Defaults to your application's default queue connection
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis
 
# Optional: Defaults to the default queue name for the connection
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_QUEUE_NAME=alt_text_generation

Manual Generation

For existing assets or specific workflows:

1. Field Action: Edit an asset, find the alt text field, and click the "Generate Alt Text" action
2. Statamic Action: In an Asset container, use the "Generate Alt Text" action from the contextual menu
3. CLI Command: Process assets in bulk with:

php please auto-alt:generate

See php please auto-alt:generate --help for options to specify containers, assets, and overwriting behavior

Using Local Ollama

For privacy or compliance reasons, you can run vision models locally with Ollama:

1. Set up Ollama: Install Ollama and pull a vision model: ollama pull llava
2. Configure the addon:

AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL=ollama/llava

3. Configure Prism: Publish Prism's config and set the Ollama endpoint:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="prism-config"

Then update config/prism.php:

'ollama' => [


    'url' => env('OLLAMA_URL', 'http://localhost:11434'),

],

Generation Parameters

Fine-tune the AI generation with these environment variables:

AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MAX_TOKENS=100      # Maximum length of generated text
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_TEMPERATURE=0.7     # Creativity (0.0 = deterministic, 1.0 = creative)
AUTO_ALT_TEXT_TIMEOUT=60          # Request timeout in seconds

Upgrading from v0.x

If upgrading from v0.x, update your environment variables:

Before (v0.x)

AUTO_ALT_TEXT_SERVICE=openai
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4.1
OPENAI_ENDPOINT=https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions

After (v1.x)

AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL=openai/gpt-4.1
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

Breaking changes:

• Moondream support has been removed (use Ollama with llava for local processing)
• Config structure simplified: services.openai.* replaced with flat model setting
• Environment variables changed: AUTO_ALT_TEXT_MODEL replaces AUTO_ALT_TEXT_SERVICE